CCAN

By Quentin Scott, Federal Policy Director, Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN)

I recently celebrated my 5th anniversary at Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), and I realized that, when I started here, I never could’ve imagined what an incredible journey it would be. From the life-long friendships I built to achieving historic climate victories that felt nearly impossible a generation ago.

Some moments still feel surreal — spending nearly two years organizing in West Virginia to pressure Senator Joe Manchin to support Build Back Better (the precursor to the Inflation Reduction Act), being one of six people sitting in the Senate Gallery to watch Vice President Kamala Harris cast the monumental tiebreaking vote to pass the historic Inflation Reduction Act (thank you Senator Chris Van Hollen), and leading a march and rally at EPA Headquarters to pressure the Biden Administration to finalize historic rules to reduce pollution from power plants. These are some of my fondest memories and proudest professional accomplishments that I will never forget.

However, this past year, it has been tough to watch many of our accomplishments as a climate community be swept away by the stroke of the presidential pen. In 2026, our fight looks different. I now organize rallies at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to protect basic climate science, advocate on Capitol Hill for common-sense investments into affordable and job-creating clean energy, and desperately push back against attacks on critical climate programs and laws from the hostile Trump Administration.

I am often asked what keeps me hopeful in spite of the political chaos and intensifying climate crisis. The answer is simple: my colleagues and science. First, CCAN’s state and local teams are achieving big victories to make up for federal backsliding. And second, solar geoengineering research. Yes, I said solar geoengineering research. 

Solar geoengineering or solar reflective methods (SRM) are activities intended to cool the Earth by temporarily reflecting 1-2% of incoming sunlight away from Earth. It’s no substitute for cutting carbon pollution, but it could help avoid the worst impacts of climate change as we complete the clean-energy transition. However, before decision-makers can make informed decisions on the uses of SRM, we need responsible and transparent research.   

I’m glad that, while CCAN continues to fight as hard as ever to decarbonize, we are also taking some time to think about what happens if decarbonization efforts are too little or too late to avoid the worst-case impacts of climate change. Coming up even a little short of our goals could mean tens of thousands of avoidable deaths, millions of people displaced, and trillions of dollars in global damages. That’s why we need trustworthy, transparent SRM research conducted in the public interest. 

I’ve now joined a new community of SRM research advocates who are small in number but passionate to solve the climate crisis, frustrated by Trump’s attacks on mitigation and adaptation efforts, and committed to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. SRM research advocates understand better than most what’s at stake when we talk about SRM. The hopes, risks, and absolute need to understand the impacts of SRM before any future decision maker decides to use it.

In a world of uncertainty, it’s almost certain that global warming will cross the Paris Agreement goal of staying below 1.5°C of warming. Every tenth of a degree above that threshold reduces our understanding of our climate and increases the risks to our communities, economies, and way of life. What does that mean for our most vulnerable? What actions may future desperate leaders take to protect their communities from escalating risks of climate change? 

These are the questions that fuel SRM research. Academics and researchers across the globe are working tirelessly to answer how SRM might affect weather patterns, food systems, and health, but we need more data, resources, and trained scientists to truly understand the risks and benefits.    

As the planet nears and likely exceeds the 1.5°C Paris limit, understanding every tool available becomes urgent. We can’t afford to wait another decade to fund this work. Responsible, government-led research and open public dialogue are essential to ensure SRM decisions—if ever made—are informed, democratic, and ethical. 

I believe civil society can do two things at once: stay laser-focused on decarbonization AND researching SRM techniques in case we ever have to consider a plan B. Working at CCAN gives me great hope that we’re not just fighting the climate fights of today, but anticipating the challenges of tomorrow.   

About the author: Quentin Scott (he/him) joined CCAN in January 2021 as part of the newly created CCAN Federal Team. He moved from Chicago specifically to build political will for groundbreaking national climate and climate justice policies. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, he got a first-hand look at the two Americas and sought to bring the two Americas closer together through advocacy.

Before joining CCAN, Quentin was chief of staff for an Illinois State Representative and a legislative correspondent in the US House of Representatives, and has led numerous issue and candidate campaigns across the Midwest and East Coast. In his roles, he has stood with neighborhood groups to hold industrial polluters accountable in communities of color and looks forward to bringing that fight to the federal level. 

The post A Climate Activist’s Journey and Call for Research into Potential Plan B  appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

The move eliminates ‘endangerment finding’, the scientific basis for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and public health safeguards  

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced today the shattering of the landmark “endangerment finding,” a cornerstone of scientific research that has guided U.S. climate action for nearly two decades. The EPA’s unconscionable action to revoke the 17-year-old finding dismantles the legal and scientific foundation that allows the U.S. government to regulate the emissions from greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. This decision will undermine pollution standards from sources, including vehicles and dirty power plants that were built on that finding, and put Americans’ health and safety at risk. 

This unprecedented move threatens pollution standards that have protected Americans from harmful emissions and decades of progress in addressing climate change. Trump’s EPA continues its aggressive approach to rolling back pollution regulations. This week, it is the “endangerment finding”; next week, additional rollbacks are expected for the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, coal ash ponds, and more in the coming weeks and months. Trump and his allies may continue to dismiss climate change as a hoax,  but ignoring the everyday impacts of a warming planet will make Americans more vulnerable to higher costs, extreme weather events, and adverse health impacts. 

Quentin Scott, Federal Policy Director for Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), released the following statement:

“As expected, the Trump Administration continues to be in the pockets of big polluters and ignores the impacts of climate change on Americans’ lives. The ‘endangerment finding’ is rooted in credible scientific evidence and well-established legal underpinnings. Relying on junk science to shatter the ‘endangerment finding’ will cost Americans in dirtier air, more preventable disease and deaths, and a higher cost of living to mitigate downstream impacts of pollution. Once again, Trump fails to deliver for the American people while enriching himself and his allies. Congress must step in and use the Congressional Review Act to reverse this unconscionable decision.”

###

Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the first grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in the Chesapeake Bay region. Founded in 2002, CCAN has been at the center of the fight for clean energy and wise climate policy in Maryland, Virginia, Washington, DC and beyond.

The post Trump’s EPA Guts Landmark Climate Foundation, Putting Public Health at Risk appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

By Mike Tidwell, Executive Director, Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN)

“We are moving in the right direction but at the wrong speed.”

That was the key message from Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the United Nations climate talks in Belem, Brazil wrapped up in November. The world is currently projected to warm between 2.5-2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100, according to U.N. estimates released during the conference. That warming would bring incalculable harm to the planet. Still, it’s down from the 3.5 degrees of warming projected just a decade ago.

Progress in recent years has come in part from China, whose leaders created the most buzz at the Belem climate talks with their powerhouse exports of nearly $1 trillion worth of solar panels, batteries and EV since 2018. But China, while revolutionizing the tools the world needs to decarbonize, is still building NEW coal plants inside its borders. Those coal plants – combined with the reckless boom in fracked gas and oil in the US (a nation that didn’t even bother to send a delegation to Belem) – contribute to a world already approaching 1.5 degrees C of warming above preindustrial levels.

This real-time warming is already creating hurricane monsters like Helene in the U.S. and crop-killing heat waves in India and sea-level rise everywhere. A near doubling of the current heat to up to 2.9 degrees C will almost certainly be catastrophic, according to our best science.

So thank god a growing number of scientists, philanthropists, government agencies, and nonprofit leaders worldwide are committed to exploring a possible “Plan B” for the planet. Their goal is to find potentially safe ways to artificially cool the Earth until the inevitable full transition to clean energy is achieved globally later this century.

Until recently, this concept of “geoengineering” was considered too controversial to even discuss in many quarters. But today, as the heat mounts, full-blown programs at Harvard University and the University of Chicago are exploring ways to effectively reflect sunlight away from the planet while international conferences on the topic draw thousands of people.

Last year, the biggest step to date on this topic occurred when the United Kingdom committed to spending $75 million on geoengineering research projects scattered across the globe. The goal of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency is to transparently invest in computer modeling, atmospheric observations, and limited outdoor testing of technologies that could one day cool the planet. Ideas include everything from artificially brightening marine clouds with saltwater spray to mimicking the cooling properties of volcanic eruptions by placing sulfur aerosols in the stratosphere.

To be clear, no one – not the UK, not researchers at Harvard, not the growing number of climate-fighting nonprofits like mine around the world – is calling for actual deployment of ANY system to engineer the climate. The goal is simply to research and test plausible ideas so that future world leaders at least have a few carefully vetted options to consider if climate collapse becomes eminent.

Transparency is a key feature embraced by nearly all the actors in this growing geoengineering conversation and research push. The ARIA program, for example, is governed by a set of published principles that emphasizes a public versus private involvement in research and testing. The agency’s commitment to open dialogue with communities where research occurs is meant to avoid mistrust and confusion wherever possible.

Unfortunately, in the conspiracy-rich world of our current media landscape, preposterous theories abound about governments secretly creating storms to punish political opponents or using airplane “chemtrails” to brainwash citizens. US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin last July was compelled to publicly confirm the obvious: The US government is not engaged in any activities to change the weather or pollute the sky with mind-altering substances.

The opposite is actually true. An $11 million annual program at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration protects the world from any rogue attempts to alter the climate. NOAA flies special B-57 planes regularly into the stratosphere to measure the concentration of various light-reflecting aerosols there. If these levels suddenly change in the future, NOAA could alert world leaders that a rogue nation or a private actor was tampering with the climate without international agreement.

This is good to know given that at least two private companies – one called Make Sunsets and the other Stardust – have raised millions in private capital and signaled an interest in commercializing geoengineering efforts. They have not been transparent in their activities and average people have every right to feel nervous about such companies.

The better approach – the only sensible approach given the health of the entire planet is at stake – is to increase publicly funded research with guidance from governments, universities and nonprofits. Thankfully, even as the Belem climate talks wrap up with underwhelming results, the growing support for responsible geoengineering research continues to grow.

About the author: Mike Tidwell is founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in Maryland, Virginia, DC, and West Virginia.

Under Tidwell’s leadership, CCAN has helped pass landmark clean-energy legislation in Maryland and the District of Columbia; blocked coal and oil development plans in Virginia; and worked with groups nationwide to push for a fair and effective carbon cap policy on Capitol Hill. A long-time resident of Maryland, he lives in Takoma Park with his wife Beth and son Sasha. Read more about Mike here.

The post After Brazil Climate Talks, Thank God There’s Research Into a Plan B appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.